Inner-city economic development as well as educational reform is essential for empowering poor urban residents to compete in the economy and polity. Increasingly, the notion of local control over economic development, and education to that end, has arisen as a critical concern among theoreticians and practitioners. A model that inextricably entertwines economic control with education is worker-controlled and -owned enterprise. Such enterprises can provide jobs and income for often-unemployed urban residents who have been particularly hard-hit by economic restructuring, recession, and racism. Within such enterprises, poor and low-skilled workers are challenged by and imparted dignity through participation in policy decision-making and work design. A focus on economic development moves the civil rights agenda of the 1960's and '70's to confrontation with contemporary economic and racial realities, while collective (albeit private) control of enterprise challenges conservative, traditional approaches to community economic development. A highly successful home-health care enterprise in New York City which has created a substantial number of high-quality, low-skilled jobs for inner-city residents utilizing the worker-controlled and -owned model was studied. A case-study approach to determine the historical sequence of events was employed. A qualitative methodology involving interviews with individual workers and managers as well as statistically-compiled responses from virtually all workers to determine worker participation and satisfaction was utilized. The enterprise was compared with other traditionally-structured New York City home health care agencies as well as with another worker-controlled and -owned enterprise which was not a home health care agency. The study concluded that the worker-controlled and -owned model can be effective in addressing both urban poverty and poor education. Six essential elements for achieving democratic urban economic development are: (1) job creation; (2) service to local low-to-moderate income constituency; (3) design of challenging, full-time, tenured work; (4) democratization of workplace decision-making and profit; (5) payment of reasonable wages and benefits; and (6) contribution to further community economic development. The model studied introduced worker-ownership only after the enterprise had stabilized out of consideration for poor workers' financial limitations as well as a need for managerial control in establishing a viable enterprise. A nonformal educational method proved highly effective with low-skilled workers.

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From the early nineteenth century through World War II Springfield, Massachusetts was one of the world's preeminent metalworking centers. On the eve of the Second World War hundreds of firms and thousands of skilled machinists produced machine tools, fixtures, castings, forgings, and precision components for the nation's automobile, electrical appliance, steel, and aircraft industries. However, by the mid-1950s Springfield industry commenced an inexorable decline, interrupted briefly by Vietnam War defense spending. Firms were purchased by outside investors and work moved, while foreign firms gained market share from local companies. Springfield's fall from manufacturing prominence mirrors events elsewhere in the industrial Northeast and is important to understand. The decline is examined mainly through a history of the American Bosch Company, its workers, and their union. Established in 1911, unionized in 1936, Bosch specialized in the design and manufacture of precision diesel fuel injections components. During World War II it employed thousands of skilled machinists. After the war it was purchased by Wall Street investors and in the early 1950s became part of a small corporation headquartered in New York City. By the early 1960s it had become the most profitable firm in the diesel products division of a Fortune 500 corporation. By the time it closed in 1986 Bosch was an aging plant with a few hundred workers owned by a Fortune 100 corporation. From 1950 forward management attempted to implement numerous strategies to reduce costs and maintain market share, including the construction of a low-wage plant in Mississippi, the acquisition of overseas factories, and in-plant schemes to streamline production. The union resisted in-plant restructuring efforts, but offered token opposition to the company's world-wide maneuvers. Throughout, unionists believed their machining skills coupled with their knowledge of the products being produced were assets the company needed to succeed. The company never shared this perspective, and unresolved, this disjuncture contributed to the closing of the plant. It is argued here that management's efforts failed because workers were treated as appendages of their machines.

Does the underrepresentation of women in school administration reflect differences in preferences or discriminatory selection criteria? To examine this question, this dissertation examines the criteria used to promote teachers into school administration and the consequence of these criteria for equity in promotions and school quality. In this dissertation, promotions are modelled as the joint occurrence of two sequential events: (1) teacher supply to the promotional queue and (2) school board demand for administrators. The empirical challenge is to statistically identify the supply and demand-side of promotion when only the joint occurrence of these two events are observed in the data. Drawing from a large nationally representative data set matching teachers, schools, administrators, and school districts, I test the hypotheses that access to school administration is not solely determined by qualifications, i.e. that discrimination plays a role. Key results show that when teacher desire for promotions and credentials are controlled for, men are more likely than women to be selected for promotions. Additional evidence suggests that women's promotion disadvantage may not stem from limited search strategies or an inability to manage schools. I conclude with an analysis of the pay gap between male and female principals. Results show that after controlling for a variety of human capital, school environment, school level and locale variables, male principals earn 5.4% more than female principals. This translates into a yearly $2,205.4 income gain.

The purpose of this study was to examine factors used by arbitrators in deciding the outcome of disciplinary labor arbitration cases involving excessive employee absenteeism. The seven key tests of just cause identified by Carroll Daugherty in the 1966 Enterprise Wire Co. arbitration case were used as the basis for examining the cases in the study.